I've been typing one handed since 2006!

Month: February 2011

When you are trapped in a small apartment with one sick husband and two sick children, you don’t know whether to be grateful that you still seem to have held onto your own good health or apprehensive about the certain doom which must await you.

Watching a yucky stomach bug make the people you love miserable means that you second guess every bite that you consume, knowing that your healthy body is in fact probably a ticking time bomb, and you find yourself eating a strict diet consisting of things you’ll regret a little bit less later. Somehow you still manage to gain five pounds.

When you are the lone healthy person in a family of sickos, it means that your role as Caretaker and Mommy Supreme must kick into overdrive. There will be more baths taken during The Sickness than your kids have had all year. You’ll find that three sets of sheets for your four year old’s twin bed aren’t actually enough to get through one night and you’ll cross your fingers and pray while you clean stuffed animals, baby dolls and other toys that were tucked into bed with them so sweetly before the nightmare began, hoping they’ll survive to be snuggled another night.

When you’re kids have been sick for three days and you think you’ve washed every article of clothing, every set of sheets, blankets and towels that your apartment has, they’ll throw up once more for good measure, forcing you to track down anything else that might conceivably be dirty so that you can wash the one lone set of pajamas that were soiled. You’re hands will by now be dry and cracking from excessive hand washing, bath giving and laundry prepping. Your sanity hanging on by a thread.

When you finally go to sleep after a long day of tending to your poor sweet babies, you’ll find yourself unable to actually sleep because between keeping one ear carefully trained on the door for sounds of sick children, you’ll be listening carefully to the sounds of your own body, questioning every gurgle and grimace that your body makes that you wouldn’t normally worry about or even audibly hear. You wonder, “Will this be the last minute before the sickness overtakes me, too? Will my husband be healthy before I’m wiped out so he can take care of me or will we all just roll around in agony together and hope for the best?”

When you’re family has been sick all weekend and all Monday, too, you’ll find the highlight of your day – the one lone moment of calm and peace in the storm – lasts about as long as one warm mug of chai tea. Drink up, momma. You’ll be back on duty soon.

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It’s time once again, bloggy friends, for my monthly Nightstand post, part of a book blogging carnival hosted by 5 Minutes for Books. ‘

Since we last nightstanded together I’ve read the following books:

Deep Down True by Juliette Fay – Finished January 31, 2011 – I really enjoyed this book. Despite a lot of content that I can’t personally relate to, the characters and plot were so well written and realistic that I found I could relate to them anyway. I really liked the idea of Dana, the main character learning to be LESS nice. I know a few doormats like myself, who could sometimes stand to learn that lesson. This is a book that will make you laugh and cry and root for a happy ending. – full review –

Saltwater Taffy by Eric Delabarre – Finished February 7, 2011 – I have mixed feelings on this book and cannot decide if the problem lies with the book or with the fact that I’m not exactly it’s target audience. Told from the POV of a 13 year old boy in the 70′s who embarks on a treasure hunt with 5 of his friends, this book is littered with life lessons and a whole lot of baseball! Having never been a 13 year old boy and having no interest in baseball, it was often hard to relate to and I found the characters more annoying than likable – but again this could have more to do with my demographic than the book. (full review coming soon)

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire – Finished February 16, 2011 – I enjoyed reading this imaginative interpretation of Cinderella. Maguire’s writing style is gritty, descriptive without being flowery. His story is somewhat dark in some regards, but humorous and enjoyable to read. I did not love this book. The writing style is unique but verges on tedious. The story was interesting though and overall I liked it. – full review –

Right now I’m reading Friendship Bread by Darien Gee, which I’m enjoying though the subject matter is a good bit more serious than I’d bargained for as one of the characters is struggling with the death of a child – I know, not the lightest of topics for an overly paranoid mommy.

But there are several characters that the book revolves around and each are well written, fully fleshed out and the story is enjoyable – and frankly now that I’ve read this far, I think for my sanity, I’ll need to read it through to it’s “happy ending” so I can sleep again at night!

When I finish Friendship Bread I plan to read:

Bright Young Things by Anna Godbersen which I started this month but had to temporarily put down so I could focus on some review books. I adore Anna Godbersen though and I’m very anxious to get back to this book which takes place in the roaring 20’s!

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon – my bookclub’s pick for March, a historical fiction, mystery book which looks very interesting.

Some classic work of literature for my Classics Challenge – any suggestions? What was your favorite ‘classic’ read?

What are you reading right now?

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I mentioned in my Daybook entry that we finally finished Dolly this weekend. I first stumbled upon the pattern for this beautiful doll at hart + sew, where Stacy shows the beautiful suitcase / doll house and pretty doll clothes that she’d made for her dolly, using a template by Emily at The Black Apple, which was featured at Martha Stewart because hello, such a fantastic pattern, am I right?

Unfortunately being able to admire pretty patterns and pick out pretty fabrics, doesn’t make me a gifted seamstress. In fact, I appear to be the opposite of this and found myself frequently whining “I don’t want to doooooo this anymore,” as the sewing machine gave me grief after grief, probably because I’m inept. Luckily, my husband is far more talented and patient and helped me finish the doll anyway. I’d say the workload was 15% effort and 85% swearing on my end and 100% awesomeness on his end.

The biggest pain in the butt for me with this project was the lovely golden felt which eventually after much swearing became her hair. Felt does not like to be sewn, at least by my hands. It sucked. Also, while sewing in a straight line is fairly straight forward, sewing curves mostly eludes me. There must be some easy obvious way to do it, but mostly for me it was just more swearing and making pouting faces at my husband.

He’s a keeper.

And in the end, the doll was finished. Though we found a small hole in the leg last night that needs to be mended, but shhhhh in the end the doll was finished, the girl was happy, the doll was adorable and action shots were taken…

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Today

Outside my window: It’s kind of wet and dreary and drizzly and slushy and ten million other reasons to stay indoors at all costs.

This weekend: the poor little miss had a stomach bug so we spent much of the weekend indoors, biding time, attending to the yuck. Luckily she didn’t seem too distraught about the whole thing and kept busy with the work of play.

The worst seems to have finally passed though with minimal fuss and we spent our time trapped indoors getting caught up on projects, like this pretty doll that I bought fabric to make forever and a moon or two ago.

Meet Dolly.

We also: managed to get a few errands done early before we realized the sick was so sickly. Love this picture of MM and BB driving a shopping cart car together. That BB is quite an aggressive driver.

I’m reading: Friendship Bread by Darien Gee. It’s… interesting. The plot is much heavier than I anticipated and I’m not quite sure how I’m going to handle the unraveling of certain stories, but it’s well written and enjoyable when it’s not making me think, “Oh my god, please don’t make me read about this awful thing!” So yeah… I’ll let you know how I feel when (if) I finish it.

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I was chasing her around taking pictures of her walking that little toy turtle around the apartment and she stooped down to pick it up, then looked up at me with that adorable grin and I was lucky enough to catch it on camera! ::swoon::

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About Momma

Hi, my name is Jen! I am a mom to two adorable kids, one ridiculous dog and wife to a handsome husband. I'm a working mom for the first time in EIGHT years, own too many books and have a tendency to change my blog design a LOT.

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My Other Blog: critic&fangirl

I’m linking up with Leigh Kramer to share some of the things I’ve been into this month. This is a great opportunity to fangirl all over the place about what you’ve been reading, watching, listening to – or to give said things a harsh critique when necessary. Here’s how the month shook out for me. Reading Right […]

I feel like I blinked and it was Friday. I had a fairly busy week but it went by at lightning speed. While I eat my breakfast as slooooowwwwwllllly as possible compensate, here are some terrifically geeky things to read online this week: The Doctor Who Season 9 trailer is here! 5 things to do […]

I just read this:

I was a major Boy Meets World fan growing up and I loved getting to know the girl behind Topanga. Danielle is very funny and had a lot of good stories to tell, but I also loved that she seems to have remained pretty down to earth all told. I like to imagine that we'd be total BFFs if we ever met.

I just read this:

I was a major Boy Meets World fan growing up and I loved getting to know the girl behind Topanga. Danielle is very funny and had a lot of good stories to tell, but I also loved that she seems to have remained pretty down to earth all told. I like to imagine that we'd be total BFFs if we ever met.